268, the number of days I’ve spent waiting to die. 36, however, is the number of days I’ve stayed with LAIKA. I noticed her faint breathing a while ago. A whirring that usually kept me company started fading and syncopating. She was dying. My one friend was dying. Her beeping in the background is getting quieter and quieter.

I wish the stars conversed with each other, mindless background chatter, muttering, murmuring, car horns beeping. Beep. This one was late. The radar light dims almost to nothing. Beep. Now, nothing. Beep.

I get up to confirm it for myself, to confirm the death of my companion. Beep. We crash landed here, CK-11, a tiny asteroid. It could easily have been an empty point in space, but I like to think LAIKA chose this place for me. A view of a nebula in the distance, a star exploding far away in the centre. Beep. I’m happy to think LAIKA isn’t dying alone. That a star out there took on the mission of dying together.

Romantic, isn’t it? Sharing your last breath with someone. I yearn for that too, to die with anyone or anything. I found love in its absence, or maybe its abundance. I should really draw myself a friend, take care of it, sleep with it, trace the outline with my finger. Beep. That might be the last one.

The day we met was far from ordinary, the last day of the universe, or rather, everything that lived in it. In the chaos, I found her lying near a pile of rubble, still working perfectly fine, her only fault was being old. We hurried off Erangel, at a speed of 300mph. Since the launching mechanism wasn’t compatible, the hub flung us. We span and span and span — I fainted rather quickly but I wish I could’ve seen it. The view of the universe circling me. After we landed, I heard the explosion. It must’ve happened days since I escaped. That’s the thing about time, that explosion was my present but the distance made it my future. EARTH78 destroyed, the last of civilisation, dying with a star.

Had we not been flung into space, we too would have been in its vicinity. LAIKA saved my life. And yet, I cannot save hers. I wish I could bury LAIKA into Sirius too, but I think she’d prefer the view here anyways. Looking out into the cosmos forever.

I decided 34 days ago, that I’d stay with LAIKA till she died. Then it would be my turn. When I first realised I was alone, truly and utterly alone, I wished to die that instant. First, a sharp scrap of her outer casing that broke off during impact. I brought it towards my heart, eyes closed tightly as not to witness my death. But I stopped, a millimetre in time.

The blood from gripping the rugged shard dripped and danced around me. Floating and taunting me. I let it sit there for 2 days, refusing to clean it up. Seeing my blood made me feel alive. The wounds on my hand hurt good. I had no way of knowing if I were alive or dead, no one to confirm my existence. The scar on my hand remains a proof that I lived.

I tend to circle the back of my wrist, gently, to give myself a sense of love. To grant myself with touch. I imagine it was another human touching me. Hugging me. Love never found its way through my life, I was too busy to pursue romance but now I imagine looking out into the city lights at night and choosing one of them. One person, anybody, and living the rest of my life with them. Bad or good, I’ll do it. I’ll love them, I need to. I needed to, and now the lights are dead and I will be too.

I already brainstormed a couple ways of dying. Taking off my spacesuit and walking out cold turkey, drowning myself in the water remaining in the deposit. I’m leaning...